Empire Falls (17 page)

“I keep telling him if he doesn’t start paying attention to his grades, no college is going to want him, but no, he’s got all that figured out, just like they all do. Not that I blame him, exactly. He looks at me, and I’m doing all right without college—hell, better than all right, really—so he figures what the hell.”

Jimmy Minty paused again. “What our kids don’t understand is we want even
better
for them, not just as good. Am I right?”

Max’s return spared Miles the necessity of agreeing with him.

“Jimmy Minty,” said Max, sitting down on the bench seat and forcing the policeman to slide down next to the window. Max looked at him with what appeared to be total bewilderment. “My
God
, what a stupid kid you were growing up.”

“Go easy, Dad,” Miles said. “He’s carrying a gun these days.”

“I just hope he’s smarter than he was back then,” Max said, offering a paw to the policeman. “How the hell are you, Jimmy?”

Minty looked at the proffered hand as if he doubted Max had washed it in the men’s room, but shook it anyway. “How you doin’, Mr. Roby?”

Speaking to Miles now, as he and Jimmy Minty shook, Max said, “You remember what a stupid kid he was? My
God
, it was pitiful. I don’t think I can remember another child so untalented.”

Minty seemed to want his hand back now, but didn’t know how to get it, and Miles shrugged at him as if to suggest he had no idea what possessed his father to act the way he did.

“It was enough to make you cry,” Max said, finally letting go of the man’s hand.

Minty seemed to be weighing the dangers and benefits of asking just what he’d done to warrant such a low opinion.

“I suppose it should be a lesson to us all,” Max observed. “Never give up on a child. ’Cause even the ones you have to tie their shoes for on their wedding day could surprise you and end up gainfully employed.”

Max, with a face almost beatific, delivered this lesson as if to suggest he meant the whole thing as a compliment, causing the officer to knit his brow in confusion. He was
almost
sure he was being insulted, but not quite.

Miles, of course, had often seen his father smile and chuckle and slap men on the back, continuing to insult them until they finally had no choice but to punch him. Only the smartest popped him right away. Once Max had established that whatever he said was all in good fun, it was hard to break free of that context. Miles also knew that the target of his father’s ridicule often turned on a dime, so he wasn’t surprised when it did so now.

“My son here is the opposite,” Max explained. “Always at the top of his class … straight A’s right through school. You’d have sworn he’d go places.”

Miles sighed, resigned to his inevitable drubbing. Before, Max had insulted Jimmy Minty while looking at Miles. Now, insulting his son, he was, of course, speaking directly at the previous object of his scorn.

“There’s nothing harder to figure than a kid,” Max was telling him, as if he’d spent the better part of a long, largely contemplative life studying this question. “I’d have bet that Miles here would have grown up to have a good heart. If his father was on his uppers and needed a hand and asked his own son for a job, he’d help pronto. But apparently not.”

“You about ready to go, Dad?”

“No, I’m talking to Jimmy Minty. Go ahead if you want.”

Miles caught the eye of the waitress and signaled for the check.

“Jimmy here may not have been gifted like you, but I bet you he understands what I’m saying.”

Minty’s brow furrowed even deeper at this second reference to his intellectual limitations, even though Max had safely located these in the past.

“You see, Jimmy, I asked my son to let me help him paint our old church, so I’d have the money to go down to the Keys, but for some reason he won’t hire me. I can still climb like a monkey, too.”

Having slid a five-dollar bill onto the table, Miles stood to go. “You’re sure you don’t want a lift home, Dad? I’m not coming back for you, so don’t bother calling me at the restaurant.”

“I don’t intend to call you,” his father assured him. “Besides, Jimmy Minty here can give me a lift in the cruiser.”

“Actually, that’s against the rules,” Minty said. He was looking even more boxed in now that Miles had vacated his side of the booth. That left him and Max sitting way too close, and he knew how this would look to other people, two men crammed together like that on the same side of a small booth, one of them with crumbs in his beard.

“Hell, I can understand that,” Max conceded, waving good riddance to Miles and looking like a man who had no intention of moving. “Rules are rules. They may be dumb, and the people you hire to enforce them may be dumber yet, but what can you do? The law’s the law. There’s no law says a man’s own son can’t help him out when he needs it, that’s all I’m saying. Ain’t no law against that.”

O
UTSIDE
, Miles got into the car and turned the key in the ignition, determined to ignore the knocking on the window of the donut shop. His father, having made his point, now decided to unmake it, since the truth was that he probably
did
want a lift somewhere. Besides, he hadn’t hit Miles up for a loan yet. Sitting in the Jetta, pretending not to hear the frantic knocking, Miles supposed he understood his father’s thinking better than Max did himself. The thing to do was put the car in reverse, back out of the parking space and drive off. Teach the old man a lesson. Maybe because he was grateful to Max for giving Jimmy Minty such a hard time, he gave up the pretense and acknowledged hearing the knocking on the window. He was immediately glad that he did, for the scene framed in the window was priceless. In order to rap on the glass, Max had to lean across the booth in such a way that his moist, fragrant armpit was practically covering the policeman’s face. Miles couldn’t help but smile. He
was
grateful for his father’s existence, just as Minty had told him he should be. Sighing, he waved for Max to come along, which the old man would do, Miles knew, in his own sweet time.

His feet flat on the floor beside the Jetta’s pedals, Miles felt some give in the metal beneath the worn carpet, which suggested that the rust was eating away at the chassis. Minty was right about that, too; he should’ve sprung for the undercoating. As he watched the two men slide out of the booth, he realized that Jimmy Minty hadn’t been telling the truth about light reflecting off the donut shop window. Everything on the other side of the glass possessed the stark clarity of an Edward Hopper painting, which meant that Jimmy had pretended to be unable to see what had been plainly visible. A silly lie. A lie so small and to so little purpose that it suggested to Miles a way of life, a strategy for confronting the world, and this was further reason—if any was needed—to doubt the truth of everything the man had said inside. As Minty paid the bill at the register and Max bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine, Miles tasted something on the back of his tongue. Too much coffee mingling with stomach acid, probably. Either that or anger mingling with fear. Miles swallowed hard, forcing down whatever it was.

The two men pushed through the door onto the sidewalk, and Miles noticed that both had acquired toothpicks. “You’re okay, Jimmy,” Miles heard his father say. “I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth. I’d rather have a complete idiot for a son than an ingrate.”

Instead of getting into the cruiser, Minty came around the Jetta and motioned for Miles to roll down the window. “Take a little walk with me,” he suggested, his voice low, confidential.

“I really need to get back to the restaurant,” Miles told him.

“Won’t take a minute.”

“Go ahead,” Max said. “I’ll just sit here by myself and wait. You go with Jimmy Minty and swap secrets.”

Miles followed the policeman over to his patrol car, where he rolled the toothpick in his mouth as if considering how to begin. “I shouldn’t be doing this, but we go back a long ways,” he said. “I was going to mention it back inside, but then your old man came back and I didn’t want to worry him.”

“What is it, Jimmy?”

“Here’s the deal,” Minty said, working his toothpick. “There’s a lot of dope around town right now. Tell your brother to be careful.”

Miles felt himself instantly bristle, more at the presumed intimacy than the implied accusation. “Why should David be careful?”

“Hey. I understand. He’s your brother. I’m just saying.”

“No, Jimmy.
What
are you saying?”

“I’m just … nothing. Forget it. I’m just saying. Word to the wise is all.”

The toothpick still twirled thoughtfully. Miles considered grabbing it and running it through the man’s bottom lip and tying it there in a splintered knot. “And I can’t help thinking how bad your ma would feel if—”

Rather than punch an armed cop in broad daylight in the middle of Empire Avenue, Miles turned on his heel and strode back to the Jetta. The suddenness of this movement apparently caught his father by surprise as he was rummaging through the Jetta’s glove box. This discovery had the unintended effect of sending Miles back to Jimmy Minty, who hadn’t moved. “Look,” he said, “you don’t know the first thing about my mother, okay, so don’t bring her up in any more conversations.”

“Hey—”

“No. Shut up and listen, Jimmy,” Miles said, feeling his fury rise in his throat—the taste was anger, after all, not fear—and the blood pounding in his cheeks. “You … didn’t … know … her. Say it for me, so I know you understand.”

Jimmy Minty’s face had gone pale. “Hey, okay. I didn’t really know your mother.”

“Fine,” Miles said, some of the rage draining out of him, replaced by the knowledge that he’d overreacted. “Terrific.”

“You shouldn’t tell me to shut up, Miles,” Minty said. “Not out here in public like this. This uniform entitles me to some respect.”

“You’re right,” Miles admitted, flushed with shame yet unwilling to surrender his anger. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. Just don’t pretend you knew my mother.”

“Hey, I thought she was a great lady. That’s all I was saying—” But he must have seen Miles’s color rising again, because he stopped. “Your brother should be careful is all I’m saying, okay? Everybody knows he’s growing marijuana out there in—”

“See?” Miles said. “That’s where you’re wrong. Everybody does
not
know that.
I
don’t know that, for instance.” Which was true. He didn’t know it, not for sure.

“How come you’re getting so bent outta shape, Miles? I try to do you and your brother a favor—”

“No,” Miles interrupted him, feeling suddenly calm. “I don’t believe that. I have no idea what you’re trying to do, Jimmy. I don’t know why I’m suddenly seeing you everywhere I turn lately. I don’t know why my name should come up in your conversation with Mrs. Whiting at the courthouse, either …”

Minty squinted at this, then glanced away.

“But I do know you aren’t looking out for my well-being. That much I’m sure of. So from now on, if you want to do me a favor, stay away from me and my family. That goes for your kid too. There are lots of girls in Empire Falls. As far as I’m concerned he can choose any one he likes. There’s just one he can’t have, and that’s Tick.”

A sly smile began to steal over the policeman’s features, and Miles turned away, fearing the temptation to remove it.

“How come you don’t like me, Miles?” Minty called after him. “I’ve always wondered why.”

Miles answered without turning around. “Call it the habit of a lifetime.”

Back in the Jetta, Miles waited to turn the key in the ignition until Minty’s cruiser disappeared down the avenue.

“God, what a prize dunce he was,” Max recalled fondly.

“He wasn’t stupid, Dad. He was sneaky and mean and envious and dangerous. He still is.”

“Don’t get mad at me,” his father said. “It’s Jimmy Minty you’re mad at. I’m just a useless old man.”

Miles put the car in reverse. “Did you find what you were looking for in the glove box?”

“I borrowed ten dollars,” his father said sheepishly. “I was going to mention it, but you never gave me the chance.”

“Right.”

“I was,” Max insisted, perhaps truthfully. He did sometimes tell the truth if it suited his purpose. “If you’d hire me, I wouldn’t have to be broke all the while. If I could make some money, you’d get rid of me for the winter.”

Before pulling out, Miles craned his neck forward to look down Empire Avenue, to make sure no traffic was coming. When he and his mother used to walk downtown for a Saturday matinee at the old Bijou Theater, the sidewalks had been so crowded, the street so clogged with vehicles, that pedestrians had to turn sideways to pass by one another. They crossed the street between cars backed up for blocks from the traffic light. Now Empire Avenue was empty all the way down to the old shirt factory (
NO TRESPASSING WITHOUT PERMISSION
) where Miles’s mother had worked so they could afford the rent on the little house on Long Street, in the dark upper bedroom of which, after her cancer returned the final time, she’d screamed her agony so loudly the neighbors could hear her. Of
course
Jimmy Minty had heard those screams. Miles himself had heard them all the way down in Portland, in his small Catholic college, and hearing them he’d hurried home, even though she’d begged him not to.

Looking down the deserted street, Miles couldn’t help feeling that everyone in town must have heard her terrible screams. His brother, a mere boy, had fled into the bottle, his father to the Florida Keys. It was almost possible to believe her screams were responsible for the mass exodus that by now had lasted more than two decades, a panicky flight from her pain that emptied out the town.

“You can drop me off at Callahan’s,” Max suggested.

Miles blinked, then turned to stare at his father. “You mean Callahan’s right there?” he said, pointing at the red-brick tavern across the street, his mother-in-law’s place.

“Right.”

“For
that
you wanted a lift?”

“Maybe I wanted to spend some time with my son. Or is there some law against that, too?”